


One Way Ticket

by Lucterna



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, Gen, Reader-Insert
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-19
Updated: 2013-06-19
Packaged: 2017-12-15 11:11:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/848859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lucterna/pseuds/Lucterna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You’ve moved back in with your parents, on a weekly stipend from them as you search fruitlessly for work.  Dean is on a hunt in the middle of the woods instead of holed up at Lisa’s like he’d promised.  Sam is in Hell.  All paths will eventually cross, summoning literal and figurative demons alike.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Way Ticket

**Author's Note:**

> I just wanted to write some Supernatural, reader-insert fic. This is a post-S5 AU.

In. One-two-three. Out. One-two-three. Repeat, repeat, repeat. It’s nothing new, the steady yammering of your heart, the strain in your arms and the chilly pit that your stomach seems to have become. You’re out of Xanax and you’re out of money for the week – this used to work when you were little, when you could dig to the deepest corner of your closet and huddle there, counting and breathing, breathing and counting, until the yellingbreakingslamming subsided. Of course, you haven’t had a reasonable panic attack in years, that is, there used to be real triggers – a raised voice, someone setting a glass down too hard – but now there is only the nameless terror lurking at the back of your mind. It waits with its claws out, staved off by one pill twice, sometimes three times a day. Only now you’re out.

The sunlight is much too bright, stabbing yours eyes through spaces in the brilliant green canopy above you. Squeezing your eyes shut, you tilt your head to the forest floor. Your hands dig into the dying leaves and damp soil. In-onetwothree. Out-onetwothree.

Your chest tightens, harder and harder. It’s not working! Oh heavens, dear God, it’s not working and what exactly are you going to do when you suffocate? You’re pretty sure your lungs are collapsing this very instant. The burn travels all the way up your throat from your ribs. It feels like something is trying to rip you in two at the sternum when the dry sob bursts out of you. Tears follow, stinging as they pool against your eyelashes.

When the hand lands on your shoulder, you scream. The world turns utterly black.

Fingers snap inches above your eyelids. Inside your skull, your brain shakes like jelly at the sound. You jerk up and the hand slams into your face. “Wakey, wake- Shit!” The voice is male; he stumbles back and the sounds send little tremors through you. You press your hands to your face.

“Damn, you got a hard head.” He’s muttering as he approaches again. His footsteps sound like your father’s – heavy work boots? They thunk and clunk and you really thought you had gotten over that particular piece of fear.

The palms of your hands are wet and you don’t remember the tears falling. The stranger reaches out again and a you can practically feel his hand moving through the air. You jerk away from it.

“Are you crying?” He sounds bewildered, nothing like your father.

For the first time, you look up. Something in the tone of his voice – you’re crazy, you know it. You pass out in the woods and wake up to some strange man and… Just where are you anyway? It hadn’t sounded nor smelled like a hospital and now you get a really good look. Surrounding you are the four wooden walls of a cabin. They’re covered in the paraphernalia one would expect: a couple of taxidermied animals, sconces made out of antlers. There are plaid curtains obscuring at least three windows. An empty fireplace with the remnants of a fire dominates the room across from a tiny kitchenette. You’re laying on a dilapidated sofa, still dressed, covered with a blanket that looks much newer than anything around it.

Standing over you is the man that belongs to the voice. He’s tall, solid, and he looks like he just got out of a dogfight. Purple and yellow splotches ring one green eye and continue down his jaw to disappear into the collar of his t-shirt. Over the other, several butterfly closures seem to be holding his forehead together. Several days growth of ginger beard covers the lower half of his face and the moppy dark brown and blond at the top looks like it hasn’t seen water and soap for a long time. Your eyes drop abruptly to the bruised knuckles your head must have slammed into.

You can feel your breath starting to hitch in your chest again, coming out in erratic, useless puffs.

The stranger seems even more perplexed, but while you struggle to remember how to use your arms and legs and lungs, he kneels on the floor and wraps rough hands around yours.

“Hey, look, look at me.” Your eyes meet his before you can think and they are green like sun-kissed flakes of jade, wide and round and you can’t look away. “I know you don’t know me from Adam,” his lips purse in a weird way, “but I ain’t gonna hurt you. You hear me? I’m not going to hurt you. You look at me and you see – you see, I ain’t gonna hurt you. Got it?”

For a moment it feels like his eyes and his hands are the only things holding you in your own skin. His words register in bursts that you can’t decipher until the very last upward lilt of his voice.

All the air rushes out of you and you slump forward. The stranger slips an arm around your shoulders; he doesn’t quite hug you, but it’s reassuring all the same, an unexpected anchor. Unconsciously, he squeezes and then he’s standing up straight again.

“You want some water or something?” He disappears around the sofa and you strain over the back to see him. He’s wearing boots, but they don’t look like your fathers old black and yellow Brahmas.

“Who are you? Why- why did you bring me here?” You push the blanket off and put your bare feet on a braided rug. Where are your shoes? Oh, wait.

“I got a better question.” He runs a glass under the tap; you half expect sludge to come running out of it, but there’s clear water in the cup. “What were you doin’ out in the middle of the woods in your pajamas?”

Your gaze falls on one of the windows. The curtains still mask your view and you can’t tell whether it’s night or day outside. How long were you out? “It doesn’t matter,” you tell him, looking down at your dirty feet and the hems of your pants. “I- Thanks for not leaving me out there, but I should get home.” You stand, but suddenly he’s there and holding out the glass.

“It’s dark outside. You ain’t goin’ nowhere tonight.”

Your hands curl around the glass, too tight. “I don’t even kno-”

“Name’s Dean. Nice to meetcha. Just sit down and drink the water, all right?”

Cowed by his tone, you sit. The stranger, Dean, tidies, like you’re simply unexpected company. Although obviously old, the only real thing he has to clean up look like fast food wrappers and plastic bags. You watch him without saying anything, learning the way he moves. His steps seem a little lighter now.

Cautiously, you wonder, “Why am I here?”

He stops in the middle of throwing old newspapers into the ashen fireplace. Giving you a look out of the better eye, he says, “Not sure you really wanna know.”

Your lips press together and you suck them between your teeth. It’s an anxious habit. “No, I-I do. Please.”

Dean shakes his head, dusting off his jeans as he makes his way to the couch where you sit. It groans in painful protest at the weight of both of you. “Look, you- I know what kinda problem you got. I mean, I’ve seen it. Last thing I need to do is tell you shit that’ll make it worse.”

“The last thing I need is to imagine it on my own,” you whisper, desperate. You just want to go home, to your bed, to your things, to the potential that you might find money stashed somewhere to buy the pills you need to get this shit under control.

Dean studies you. Letting out a hard sigh, he says, “Guess so.” From nowhere, or maybe just from the floor by the couch, he produces a dark brown bottle of beer. “Truthfully, it could be a couple things. What’s out there, I mean.” He pops the cap, tosses it thoughtlessly at the floor. “I ain’t sure which. And I ain’t using some flighty crazy chick for bait.”

“I’m not crazy!” It’s defensive. Your hands clutch the glass tighter and if you had any real strength, you’re sure it could shatter. “I just- I just have a lot of anxiety.”

He glances at you over the bottle, eyebrows raised doubtfully as he drinks. “Uh huh. Either way.”

Frowning, you ask, “What would I even- What are you baiting? Rapists?” You wanted it to be a joke; neither of you laugh. You curl inward, grip on the glass shaky. “I mean, I don’t understand.”

Dean continues to side-eye you, obviously reluctant to share whatever treasure trove of knowledge he’s holding onto. Finally, he warns, “You really don’t want to know,” but continues, “I’m hoping it’s just a wendigo.”

“A wendi- What-”

But Dean is still talking, “I know how to kill wendigos, so I hope it’s that and not some stupid shit I gotta look up. I ain’t afraid of research but it takes up time I could be out ganking something.”

By this time, your eyes have grown to the size of dinner plates. The telltale iciness has crept back into your fingers. You scoot to the other end of the couch.

Dean peers over at you like he hasn’t been spouting nonsense and talking about killing things. “You wanted to know,” he says simply.

“Wh-what the-” You have to stop to breathe, cursing the way your chest has already begun tightening up. It’s as if your brain and body have simply been waiting for the excuse to attack. Your hands curl into fists and you draw your legs up onto the couch with you. “One, two, three,” you start to count out loud with no regards to Dean; he’s crazy after all, and you just want to stop freaking out long enough to get out of here. Please, please, just stop freaking out okay?

Dean runs a hand heavily over his face, and you are vaguely aware of him watching you as you try to get yourself under control. When he lets out a hard sigh and starts to move closer, you’re pretty sure you try to vault yourself over the arm of the battered couch. At the last moment, his hand closes around your arm. Your eyes start to burn with tears.

“Please, let me go,” you whimper.

His grip loosens, but doesn’t disappear and you know he’s staring hard at you while you struggle with the new addition of panicked tears. “I can’t do that. Not while it’s dark outside. I know you think I’m a crazy,” another sigh, like he’s used to this reaction from people – you almost feel bad, “but I’m really just trying to keep you safe. What’s out there is real and if I don’t kill it, it’s going to kill someone else. So, please…”

The more he talks, the less your brain feels like it is rolling around inside your skull. After a moment or two, you can even look back at him. His gaze has turned instead to the fireplace across the way, though his hand is still curled around your arm. There comes the unbidden thought that he makes a handsome profile. It seems to do the trick and you melt bonelessly against the couch. Springs poke your back through the aging, thin material stretched across them. You push back against them, as if the feeling may ground you.

“I don’t understand what’s going on.” Your voice cracks in a way that makes you feel even more fragile on the inside.

Dean lets go of you, straightening up himself. “I know you don’t. I dunno how else to tell you, either, can’t sugar coat the scary shit.”

You rub at your face, looking briefly down at the wetness that comes away on your fingertips. Crying has never made you feel anything more than pathetic. Now is no different, except your companion hadn’t shamed you for it like other, more important figures in your life. It’s an alien sense of relief. “What’s a wendigo?”

Now Dean peers over at you, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. You try not to notice how nice those lips look in motion. What a strange place your mind has gone now that it isn’t tormenting you with fear.

“It’s a nasty son of a bitch…” he begins.


End file.
